99dresses’ service offered customers the chance to swap old clothes. If you became tired of an outfit you could post it for sale on the site, setting the price in a virtual currency called “buttons” which could be spent only on the site.

99dresses’ service offered customers the chance to swap old clothes. If you became tired of an outfit you could post it for sale on the site, setting the price in a virtual currency called “buttons” which could be spent only on the site.

Fuelled by a Facebook campaign that won tens of thousands of fans before the site launched, 99dresses was deemed sufficiently promising that the famously picky Y Combinator admitted it to its startup mentoring program.

But the site’s young founder Nikki Durkin now says the site has to do away with buttons, which seem to be at the root of technical problems the site has experienced. Durkin vows, in a message posted on the now-inoperable site, to come back bigger and better.

“I’m confident I’ll be able to make this new version of 99dresses.com even bigger and better with your feedback and support,” she writes.